[squid-users] [RFC - Request for Comments] Removal of Squid external DNS helper API

As mentioned in the subject this is a call for feedback regarding the
prospect of removing the external DNS helper component from Squid and
its associated "dnsserver" binary.

To most of you this will be known as the "--disable-internal-dns" build
option.

Background:
   The external helper was added back in the early 2.x releases to
provide Squid with a flexible DNS lookup and attain such high speeds as
250 requests per second. The external helper has since been replaced by
an internal DNS resolver component which is much more performant and can
handle several thousands of requests per second, higher than that of any
other component in Squid and effetively removing DNS as a contention
point in the processing.

The external helper has been officially deprecated in Squid-2.7 and
Squid-3.0 for all installations which require only global DNS
resolution. However, system resolvers which are used by the dnsserver
helper typically offer DNS resolution using a number of mechanisms
beyond global DNS (mDNS, Bonjour, NetBIOS, WINS, etc) and we are aware
that installations exist relying on these additional services.

Given some recent advancements:
  * The world has moved on from services such as NetBIOS and WINS
  * Bonjour has grown up into mDNS
  * The upcoming Squid-3.4 series internal DNS resolver will right now
support both global DNS and local multicast DNS (mDNS).

The question to you in the community from myself as Squid-3 maintainer,
is whether global DNS and mDNS resolver queries are sufficient to meet
your needs?

If the consensus is that the upcoming 3.4 series internal resolver is
sufficiently featured to be used in all the current network
installations of Squid we may finally be in a position to remove the
deprecated component entirely in 3.4.

If you are in any way reliant on the dnsserver helper for DNS service or
runnign a custom-built helper in its place, please do speak up.

I look forward to your feedback, which may be posted here on the list or
if you require privacy for any reason you may contact me directly about
this.

Amos Jeffries
Squid-3 Release Maintainer
Received on Fri Jun 07 2013 - 14:11:15 MDT